Blog Heap o' Urantiana Links

During the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. New research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing — some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist. [Um... duh.]

Despite the common perception that total hip replacements last about 10 years, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found that the devices are extremely durable, even 20 years after surgery.

Maine's senate passed a bill on Thursday that could make the northeastern U.S. state the fifth in the country to allow gay marriage, but the lower chamber and governor have yet to approve it.

Marc Stephens said he had to act quickly when his wife Jo went into labour three weeks early as she had a history of fast births with her previous three children. The 28-year-old Royal Navy air engineer, from Redruth, Cornwall, searched "how to deliver a baby" on the internet and after viewing a few clips said he was ready to help deliver healthy baby Gabriel.

Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved... nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa... The so-called "Cape-colored" population of South Africa has highest levels of mixed ancestry on the globe, a blend of African, European, East Asian and South Indian... about 71 percent of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to western African origins. They also have between 13 percent and 15 percent European ancestry and a smaller amount of other African origins. There was "very little" evidence for American Indian genes among African-Americans....

North Dakota woman, 26, is facing a child neglect charge for allegedly breast-feeding while drunk ... Since alcohol can pass from mother to child via breast milk, Anvarinia was arrested for neglecting her six-week-old infant ...

probably the most ambitious seismological project ever conducted... USArray ... to run what amounts to an ultrasound scan over the 48 contiguous states of the US. Through the seismic shudders and murmurs that rack Earth's innards, it will build up an unprecedented 3D picture of what lies beneath North America. ... 400 transportable seismometers - will sweep all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Having started off in California in 2004, it is now just east of the Rockies, stretching from Montana's border with Canada down past El Paso on the Texas-Mexico border. By 2013, it should have reached the north-east coast, and its mission end. ... "It is our version of the Hubble Space Telescope. With it, we'll be able to view Earth in a fundamentally different way..."

[Article is unavailable]

Story Highlights Ingrid Case switched from her Episcopalian church to becoming a Quaker Study: More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives In the 19th century many people shifted religions as well, says Mark Silk "I began to see there were some things I wasn't able to get on board with fully. I don't like the traditional Episcopalian focus on the afterlife...."

A Southern California mother has been charged with murdering the 18-month-old daughter she initially reported missing last month.... Brother... says the child's death was an accident, but she didn't tell him what happened.

Iowa counties begin processing same-sex marriage applications Monday and the first gay weddings could happen within hours, but details of just what changes and benefits the ceremonies will bring are still being untangled. ... "It's all about me having the legal right to protect my family, and it's about my daughters being able to grow up knowing that their family is absolutely as valid as any other family...."

KANSAS CITY, MO. - The parents of a 5-month-old are under arrest and charged with endangering the welfare of a child after the baby was burned and they didn't take him to the hospital for weeks.... said he was accidentally burned with hot water during a bath.... She said she didn't call an ambulance because she "didn't want to pay the $700 for it...."

Kevin Roose managed to blend in during his single semester at Liberty University, attending lectures on the myth of evolution and the sin of homosexuality, and joining fellow students on a mission trip to evangelize partyers on spring break. Roose had transferred to the Virginia campus from Brown University in Providence, a famously liberal member of the Ivy League. His Liberty classmates knew about the switch, but he kept something more important hidden: He planned to write a book about his experience at the school founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell.

An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers. Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.... used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. in what is now eastern Pakistan and northwest India, belonged to a civilization as sophisticated as its Mesopotamian and Egyptian contemporaries. However, it left fewer linguistic remains. Archaeologists have uncovered about 1,500 unique inscriptions from fragments of pottery, tablets and seals. The longest inscription is just 27 signs long. ... used pattern-analyzing software running what's known as a Markov model, a computational tool used to map system dynamics. They fed the program sequences of four spoken languages: ancient Sumerian, Sanskrit and Old Tamil, as well as modern English. Then they gave it samples of four non-spoken communication systems: human DNA, Fortran, bacterial protein sequences and an artificial language.... When they seeded the program with fragments of Indus script, it returned with grammatical rules based on patterns of symbol arrangement. These proved to be moderately ordered, just like spoken languages. As for the meaning of the script, the program remained silent....

abandoned their three children -- aged eight months to four years -- in a restaurant in Italy....

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, the sixth man ever to walk on the moon, has a message for all citizens of Earth: We are not alone. "We are being visited," the 79-year-old grandfatherly "spacefarer" told 100 or so UFOlogists gathered at a National Press Club conference called by the Paradigm Research Group (motto: "It's not about lights in the sky; it's about lies on the ground"). "It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence," said the astronaut who made the longest moonwalk in history. "I call upon our government to open up … and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilization."

Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries. ... While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries....

incredible pictures from Nasa's new telescope show a galaxy of millions.... Scientists believe it could unveil the first gripping evidence of small, rocky planets like the Earth with the right conditions to support life....

Scientists have found the first skeleton of a land-dwelling relative of seals, sea lions, and walruses. The 20-million- to 24-million-year-old Arctic fossil sports webbed feet instead of flippers, providing a long-sought glimpse of what such animals looked like before they dove into the sea.

kicked her children out of the car in downtown White Plains and drove away on Sunday after they were bickering... 45-year-old mother let her 12-year-old daughter back in the car after she ran to catch up. A Good Samaritan picked up the crying 10-year-old and bought her ice cream while calling police.

planet known as Gliese 581d has a lot more in common with Earth than astronomers first thought. ... New measurements of the planet's orbit place it firmly in a region where conditions would be right for liquid water, and thus life as we know it.... orbits its host in 66.8 days, putting it just inside the cool star's habitable zone....

"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

"There is at least the possibility that in man at the present time we can observe a significant evolutionary change, inasmuch as, in many persons, the wisdom teeth fail to cut the gums and are consequently for such person's vestigial organs. If this change establishes itself generally, man will only have altogether twenty-eight teeth. He will thus have gone farther along a path already traversed some little way by his recent ancestors" STR, P460 "The continuation of such biologic adjustments is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these attained to thirty-six in man's remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative readjustment toward thirty-two in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the human species is slowing gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this planet" UB, P737

Gov. David Paterson introduced a bill Thursday to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, comparing the effort to the fight for the abolition of slavery. Paterson, whose job approval rating has plunged below 30 percent, is making a political gamble that he can ride the momentum of other states that have recently allowed the practice, and it's unclear how the legislation will play in New York.

The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler.... an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in female dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city.... may be an artistic representation of the "Mistress of the Lionesses," a female Canaanite ruler who was known to have sent distress letters to the Pharaoh in Egypt reporting unrest and destruction in her kingdom.

a man fathered 14 children with 13 women and owes more than $530,000 in unpaid child support.... jailed Thursday.... hasn't made a support payment in six years....

now that the CIA has started to declassify top secret programs developed at Area 51, former military officers and engineers are beginning to shed some light on the enigmatic airfield and give the UFOlogists some new information to consider. ... a super-secret spy plane ... "Area 51 was the most boring place I ever worked." No aliens, no spacecraft from far-flung planets, no underground passageways....

It's not exactly a religious-art brouhaha of "Piss Christ" proportions, but a painting that uses popular cartoon characters to parody Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is causing a bit of a stir in Old Town San Diego. And just in time for Easter weekend. "The Gathering," a new painting by artist Glen Tarnowski, uses Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian and Road Runner to stand in for Jesus and his disciples in da Vinci's famous 15th century fresco.

An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.

they're all taking the wrong route, according to Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson. In a new book, titled "The Final Days of Jesus," Gibson says he has found the location of Jesus' trial, where Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, condemned him to death by crucifixion. ... So if the trial was outside the Old City, as Gibson believes, and not in the Antonia Fortress, then the traditional Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus took to his crucifixion, is wrong. ...

now the proud parents of their first child, Stella, who was born in February. Yet when he was a teenage in the 1980's, he not only did not know if he would survive to adulthood or become a father. He was diagnosed with leukemia and had three years of chemotherapy. His doctors then recommended radiation therapy. His parents concerned about the possibility of him surviving but being sterile managed to persuade doctors to freeze a sperm sample for him. ... after 22 years the frozen sperm was thawed and via in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) last June his wife became pregnant....

"Most regular church-goers have heard their less scrupulously observant fellows called 'Christmas and Easter Christians.' Well, they also have their counterparts in the mainstream media: "Christmas and Easter Anti-Christians," said Colleen Raezler, a research assistant at the conservative Culture and Media Institute, in a commentary on NewsBusters. "How else to explain the spate of skeptical, negative stories that inevitably accompany the two most important Christian holy days?"

The National Organization for Marriage, a key backer of the successful campaign against same-sex marriage in California, is launching a $1.5 million ad campaign to "energize" gay-marriage opponents in key states "by making the case that it will impinge directly on their own lives."

Here is a listing of same-sex marriage license laws in the U.S.

"The X-chromosomes of any species, in addition to determining sex, carry genes. The corresponding genes in the pair of X-chromosomes that determine a female may or may not be identical. Thus the X-chromosome carries genes which give rise to sex-linked characters; and such genes will differ in different strains. We must explicitly repudiate the idea that the sex-chromosomes have no other activity than the determination of sex. They often carry other factors and, when these are modified by mutation, sex-linked changes may appear in the offspring" STR, P447 "This number twelve, with its subdivisions and multiples, runs throughout all basic life patterns of all seven superuniverses. There are also seven architectural types of life design, fundamental arrangements of the reproducing configurations of living matter. The Orvonton life patterns are configured as 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, and 768. On Urantia there are forty-eight units of pattern control—trait determiners—in the sex cell of human reproduction" UB, P397

After more than 40 years of transmissions these papers known as the "Urantia Papers" were published in 1955 as the Urantia Book. This 2,000 page book self proclaims to be the most recent presentation of truth to our planet. The first 1,300 pages teach how things are done in Heaven. The last 700 pages are the complete life and teachings of Jesus. These papers give a detailed account of 19 appearances of Jesus after his resurrection. The New Testament only tells of four appearances... -Lynn E. Rhoderick Grants

The famously subversive US cartoonist Robert Crumb has announced the completion of his long-awaited take on the Book of Genesis. The acclaimed satirist revealed on his personal website that he had finished the project, which is out this autumn, and which his UK publisher is predicting will "provoke the religious right". Four years in the making, Crumb worked from the King James Bible and Robert Alter's translation to reinterpret the Book of Genesis, from the Creation via Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to Noah boarding his ark.

The first phase of the Pentagon's plan to regrow soldiers' limbs is complete; scientists managed to turn human skin into the equivalent of a blastema — a mass of undifferentiated cells that can develop into new body parts. Now, researchers are on to phase two: turning that cellular glop into a square inch of honest-to-goodness muscle tissue.

There is a similarity between Scientific Theory and Religion and The Urantia Book. "When the elements were arranged in increasing order of atomic weight it was found that elements with similar properties tended to recur at periodic intervals. [Frank Jakubowsky]

The Vermont Senate has given its final stamp of approval to a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry in the state. Lawmakers passed the measure on Tuesday in voice vote with no debate. Now the issue moves to the House, where the a committee has scheduled a week's worth of testimony on the bill.

Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers from Uppsala University and colleagues reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods. ... Although the first fragments were described nearly one hundred years ago, they were assumed to be part of a crustacean-like animal. It was not then realised that other parts of the animal were also in collections, but had been described independently as jellyfish, sea cucumbers and other arthropods. ... had a segmented body with a head bearing a pair of spinous claws and a circular jaw structure with many teeth. But it differs from Anomalocaris by the possession of a huge three-part carapace that projects out from the front of the animal's head.

Researchers have found evidence which suggests that evolution drives animals to become increasingly more complex. ... "If you start with the simplest possible animal body, then there's only one direction to evolve in — you have to become more complex.... Sooner or later, however, you reach a level of complexity where it's possible to go backwards and become simpler again. "What's astonishing is that hardly any crustaceans have taken this backwards route. Instead, almost all branches have evolved in the same direction, becoming more complex in parallel. "This is the nearest thing to a pervasive evolutionary rule that's been found. "Of course, there are exceptions within the crustacean family tree, but most of these are parasites, or animals living in remote habitats such as isolated marine caves. "For those free-living animals in the 'rat-race' of evolution, it seems that competition may be the driving force behind the trend. "What's new about our results is that they show us how this increase in complexity has occurred. Strikingly, it looks far more like a disciplined march than a milling crowd."

STUNNED teenager Rachael Yannetta was rushed into hospital with stomach pains ... and then gave birth to a baby daughter. The 19-year-old had no idea she was heavily pregnant and simply thought she was "piling on weight". "I'm still in complete shock," said Miss Yannetta. "Surprise isn't the word, the whole family's stunned."

He's been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again. And his doctors call it a miracle. ... A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months. "I'm here for a spider bite. I didn't know I would end up walking...."

"The baby was described as very lethargic, not responsive."

About 100 million light-years away, in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish), three galaxies are playing a game of gravitational give-and-take that might ultimately lead to their merger into one enormous entity.

A controversial Italian doctor known for his work allowing post-menopausal women to have children has claimed in an interview to have cloned three babies who are now living in eastern Europe. "I helped give birth to three children with the human cloning technique," Severino Antinori, a prominent gynaecologist, told Oggi weekly in an interview to appear Wednesday.

A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring. The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year. His clinic also offers sex selection.

As I stated in The New Evangelicalism And Its Bohemian-Style Emergent Church, it's just a matter of time before those in the Emergence against Sola Scriptura that are hitting the bong finally 'fess up like the man in the following story "testifies" for the Lord. Within that post I also pointed out that, from my days in a reggae band with two Rastas from Kingston, I personally can tell you for a fact that the spiritual seekers known as the Rastafarians beat both of them to the shtick that God supposedly gave us this herb for "wisdom."

It was mentioned that Ernest William Barnes book: Scientific Theory and Religion was used for source material for The Urantia Book. Here are some ideas that may indicate a connection. This does not attempt to show that The Urantia Book was authored by humans, but that Celestials used the best available human sources. It gives an idea what the thoughts were at that time.

Exercising one's first amendment right to freedom of religion can be a tricky thing, especially when your form of worship consists of lighting up a joint in the name of God. Just ask Norman Hutchinson of Mexico, Maine. Hutchinson is a member of the Religion of Jesus Church, a Hawaiian-based faith that not only encourages "cannabis sacraments," but mandates it.

[This site is not what one might presume the domain name means; it is, rather, a site for Intelligent Design believers.]

Uniting Urantia mini wiki … where students of the Urantia Papers can come together and share thoughts and encouragement.

A House committee passed a bill Monday intended to stop the "silent auction" of children by cracking down on attorneys who sell and traffic children up for adoption.

In what legislators are calling a first, one-fifth of the Oklahoma House voted Feb. 11 to strike from the record a prayer offered on the chamber floor by the Rev. Scott H. Jones, pastor of Cathedral of Hope UCC-Oklahoma City. ... Jones is a constituent of McAffrey's Oklahoma City district. ...believe the objection was raised because of their sexuality. Jones leads the largest predominantly LGBT congregation in Oklahoma City and is himself gay. McAffrey is Oklahoma's only openly gay legislator.

Baby-faced Alfie, who is 13 but looks more like eight, became a father four days ago when his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman gave birth to 7lb 3oz Maisie Roxanne. He told how he and Chantelle, 15, decided against an abortion after discovering she was pregnant.

The mother of the woman who gave birth to octuplets has slammed her daughter's actions as 'unconscionable' and said that the single mother has no way to support the babies and her six other children.

Darwin's theory of evolution has become the bedrock of modern biology. But for most of the theory's existence since 1859, even biologists have ignored or vigorously opposed it, in whole or in part.

"I use marijuana to open the endorphins of the mind so I can spiritually receive God," Hutchinson told the Portland Press Herald. He meets with fellow worshipers every Saturday for their "last supper." The Religion of Jesus Church, hokey as is sounds, is a bona fide religion and has been recognized as such by the State of Hawaii. The church was founded in 1969 by Rev. James Kimmel and incorporates elements of a number of religious traditions including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Their main religious text is The Urantia Book, whic

Debris from a destroyed wind turbine which reports have claimed was hit by a UFO has been sent for forensic analysis in Germany.

"Once again I have to ask, if marriage is a 'sacred,' that is, religious institution, why in the name of the Constitution is the government in the marriage business at all?" -- Robert Finch

An arctic chill has descended upon Bethlehem in recent days. And I'm not talking about the weather, but the cold deceit of the mainstream media, which, like clockwork, file misleading reports from this important Christian city every year. They completely ignore Muslim intimidation of Christians while blaming Israel for ruining Christmas and for the drastic decline of Christianity in one of the holiest cities for that religion.

A website launched Friday with the backing of technology industry and Hollywood elite urges people worldwide to help craft a framework for harmony between all religions. The Charter for Compassion project on the Internet at www.charterforcompassion.org springs from a "wish" granted this year to religious scholar Karen Armstrong at a premier Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in California. ... Wishes granted at TED envision ways to better the world and come with a promise that Tedizens will lend their clout and capabilities to making them come true.

The central issue in the legal battle over Proposition 8 is whether the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is a state constitutional amendment, which can be passed by initiative, or a constitutional revision, which can't. From another perspective, the question is whether the scope of a minority group's rights in California should be decided by the voters or the courts.

Nicolaus Copernicus's idea that Earth was just one of many planets orbiting the sun - and so occupied no exceptional position in the cosmos - has endured and become a foundation stone of our understanding of the universe. Could it actually be wrong, though? ... According to Ellis and others, our uncertainty about galaxy distances allows an interesting possibility. The distribution of matter could look the same in all directions, but vary with distance from us. In particular, we might be sitting in the middle of a "void" - a vast spherical bubble in an otherwise homogeneous universe. This bubble is not devoid of matter. In fact, most of the stars and galaxies we can see from Earth would be contained within it. It's just that everywhere beyond it, which is too far away to see, the density of stars and galaxies is much higher.

On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says. Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.

internationally heralded reggae musician, Pato Banton… period of reflection and dedication was also the time period in which Pato Banton became acquainted with the spiritual teachings of the Urantia Book. In 2005, he recorded on the double album "The Words of Christ", based on the book. This marked Pato's return to the music industry.